RABBI SIMEON KOLKO Images of Passover balance joy, sadness

As I prepare for the upcoming Passover festival, there are several images associated with this celebration of freedom and liberation that to me are critical in conveying its profound and deep spiritual meaning.
The first surrounds the metaphors that the Passover seder affords us, as a way of balancing the joy we feel at our deliverance from persecution with the sadness evoked by the suffering of others that constitutes part of the price that was paid for our freedom from slavery thousands of years ago.
Lest we fall into the familiar trap of confusing our victory over the forces of tyranny and oppression, with a warrant to rejoice in the suffering of an enemy stripped of all claim to dignity and worth, rabbinic tradition offers the following legend.
When the Israelites sought to sing songs of glory to God at having delivered them from the Egyptians, God rebuked them with the stern reminder that the image of his creation drowning in the sea was not a cause for celebration or thanksgiving.
At another point in the seder, when we open the door to greet Elijah and to invite him to our seder, we recite difficult and troubling verses in which we ask God to "Pour out thy wrath on those nations who know you not."
The anger and sense of mistrust of the other which they reflect often cause these verses to be completely overlooked or recast in ways which render them politically correct and less offensive to modern sensibilities.
Difficult truths
In my view, our encounter with the richness of the Passover seder would benefit from a willingness to confront these words for the difficult truths they are seeking to teach us.
They ought not to be viewed in isolation, but rather as a counterpoint to the teaching cited earlier about not glorifying in the suffering of our enemies. Taken together, these seemingly contradictory teachings remind us to never become callous to the human cost of the struggle for freedom.
They also challenge us to confront the difficult truth that banishing good and evil as categories in how we look at the world is not a moral advance, but an exercise in political and intellectual cowardice.
The other image from the Passover seder which speaks to me powerfully, is the ritual for our welcoming Elijah to the Seder. Elijah is inextricably associated in Jewish tradition with the hope of the arrival of the Messiah.
When we invite Elijah into our seders, we are doing more than extending hospitality. We are expressing our fervent prayers that the physical liberation from slavery which we celebrate at Passover will culminate in the ultimate experience of liberation and deliverance made possible only with the advent of the Messianic Era.
A work in progress
We are joining our thanksgiving and celebration at having attained freedom with the sobering knowledge that in our effort to become totally liberated from that which impedes our humanity, we are best a work in progress. Our invitation to Elijah that he join us is made with the door open to the world outside of our homes.
We dare not even comprehend the possibility of the Messiah's arriving without being fully cognizant of the work that remains to be undertaken if our most fervent hopes for ourselves and humanity are to be realized.
Sherri and Zachary join me in wishing all of our Jewish friends a happy and kosher Passover, and a season of peace for all of us.
XRabbi Simeon Kolko is rabbi at Beth Israel Temple Center in Warren. Passover, which commemorates the departure of the Jews from Egypt, begins at sundown Monday and lasts for eight days.